Thursday, February 18, 2010

Preston Blair Simple Walk

For those who are confused about the Preston Blair walk samples.

There are 10 frames for a complete walk cycle in the example above.

Preston drew the first 8, but left out the last 2 because of space in the book I assume, but it's obvious what they are supposed to be. You can figure out 9 and 10 by just reversing the positions of the arms and legs for drawings 4 and 5.

You would want to shoot the walk on 2s or inbetween it, or it will be too fast.

Here you can see that the second step corresponds to the first step. The positioning of each position is not an exact mirror image of the corresponding position. If it was, the walk would look stiff and mechanical.

You'd have to shoot this on 2s as well for an 8x per step walk.

Note the perspective on the feet. The foot closest to us is always larger, and when it touches the ground is lower than the one behind when it is touching.

Also, just offhand John, are you aware at all of the early recordings of George Barnes from the 1930s? I searched and found nothing, but if you can locate a file of "A Good Night For Murder" or "Parade of the Wooden Easter Bunnies" or both, take a listen. It's PERFECT cartoon music. Like a cross between Raymond Scott and Chet Atkins. And it's every bit as odd as that sounds.

I've been a fan of Preston's book since I bought my copy for a dollar-fifty ay back when I was a mere lad of 12. I never found the walk cycle chart to be confusing in any way. A person would have to be a borderline moron not to realize that there were drawings missing in each example, but they could be easlily drawn by following the previous drawings and transposing the arms and legs. Talk about complaining that the information wasn't spoon fed to them properly.

This is not quite related... but I've just been doing some of the construction lessons from the Preston Blair book, and I'd really appreciate any pointers or comments from anyone who already has their head around this stuff!

Thanks for explaining it in more detail John! The thing that always confused me was that Preston says half of the cycle was drawn so I always assumed there were 8 drawings missing and could never figure it out. Preston should have worded it differently. I knew what he meant about reversing the positions of the arms and legs but sometimes have a hard time visualizing how to draw it even if I look at the drawings that are there.

I remember in highschool scanning this in and putting it into flash, and wondering why on earth it wouldn't loop right, or why it looked like he was limping. Because of that, there will forever be marks in my book telling me where the first step ends.